PLOT ALLEGATIONS, DENIALS.Getting curiouser and curiouser as the man, who claims he is Peter Joemel Advincula, alias Bikoy, accuses Thursday the political opposition and clergymen behind the plot to topple President Rodrigo Duterte and replace him with Vice President Leni Robredo, allegations made a news conference in Camp Crame immediately denied by those he has accused. Manny Palmero

Robredo and other opposition politicians implicated by Peter Joemel Advincula, a.k.a. “Bikoy,” immediately denied his new allegations, made after he surrendered to the police.
Advincula, who is wanted for cases of estafa and illegal recruitment, tagged the opposition Otso Diretso and Senator Antonio Trillanes IV in “Project Sodoma,” an alleged plot to install Robredo by ousting Duterte.
The police and the Palace had also discredited Advincula when he initially surfaced before the Integrated Bar of the Philippines on May 6 to claim that he was “Bikoy” and to reaffirm the allegations against the Dutertes in his videos.
READ: ’Bikoy’ a fugitive, coddlers warned
But Advincula was singing a different tune when he surrendered on May 22, apologizing to the President and his family, and saying that the videos were part of an opposition plot to topple Duterte.
Advincula claimed he only not talked with Trillanes, but held several meetings with him during which they planned the campaign, which he said took them nine months.
Under the plan, Advincula said, Robredo would seize power and appoint Trillanes as her vice president.
He said Trillanes, a constant critic of the Dutertes, was in a hurry to become vice president before his term in the Senate expires on June 30.
While the plan was being formulated, Advincula said he was made to say at Room 713-A at the Grove Condominium in Pasig City, in a unit owned by a certain Attorney Salvador, said to be a big campaign contributor to the Otso Diretso.
He said secret meetings were held in De La Salle University and Ateneo de Manila University, where he met with Senator Risa Hontiveros, a certain Yolly Villanueva Ong, a certain Boom Enriquez, Vicente Romano, and one Dan Songco.
Advincula also claimed he met Robredo once at the Ateneo, but said she did not stay long.
He said he acted as Bikoy in exchange for P500,000 as he needed cash to settle his debt with a multi-level marketing company, which had filed a complaint against him for allegedly running away with funds to be used for a beauty pageant in Bicol.
Advincula said he came to know Trillanes through a certain Fr. Albert Alejo.
In 2016, Advincula tried to link former President Benigno Aquino III, Senator Leila de Lima and former Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II to illegal drugs.
He peddled the story to Senate President Vicente Sotto III, who found it “absurd.”
Advincula said he never got the P500,000 promised him for his work as Bikoy since his reward was to be given only after Robredo became president.
He said he was worried when he learned of a plan to move him from The Grove to a secluded place where he could be killed—and then his death would be blamed on President Duterte.
Philippine National Police chief Oscar Albayalde said they would have to check the veracity of Advincula’s new allegations.
“We have to qualify his statements with evidence…He said he has evidence at hand, we will ask him to surrender them to us. If we find anything on anybody, we will file cases,” Albayalde said.
Albayalde rejected insinuations that the PNP was being used for political purposes in the case.
“He surrendered, he is under arrest,” Albayalde said in Filipino. “He requested to make a public apology because President Duterte was involved here. It’s up him because everybody knows he has a credibility problem because of the different things he says,” the PNP chief added.
Trillanes, the fiercest critic of the President in the Senate, denied the accusations against him.
“I deny the allegations made by this Bikoy character,” Trillanes said, adding that the new allegations were another ploy by the administration to harass the opposition.

He said he would consult with his lawyers so that they could file the appropriate charges against Advincula.
Liberal Party president Senator Francis Pangilinan said Advincula would say anything against the opposition as he was afraid for his life.
“We have no links with the video and Bikoy. Those accusations were all lies. Those were just made up by the administration. They have always been dragging LP in the ouster plot which they fabricated to cover up for all their failures and the corruption in this administration,” Pangilinan said.
He also castigated the Duterte administration because until now, no drug lords or drug syndicate members involved in the smuggling of tons of shabu from the Bureau of Customs have been arrested. He branded as fake the government’s drug war.
“Those are the people they should be arresting, not their critics or the opposition,” he said in Filipino.
Hontiveros said when Bikoy accused the President’s family, the administration was quick to question his credibility and threaten him with arrest.
“And now, when he sings a different song and accuses the opposition of outlandish things, all of a sudden his credibility is restored? How absurd,” she said.
“This is fanciful and another attempt by this administration to distract the public. Just like the President’s matrices, it is another product of Malacañang’s wild imagination,” she added.
A Senate probe into Advincula’s earlier accusations against the Duterte family was canceled after Senate President Vicente Sotto III cast doubts on his credibility.
Senator Panfilo Lacson said Advincula was not a credible witness and said he would leave it to the proper authorities to conduct the appropriate assessment of his new revelations.
“As far as I am concerned, being a former law enforcement officer with quite good experience in intelligence and investigation, Bikoy has to show more than just a narration of what he says now as the real facts,” said Lacson.
“He suffers from a serious credibility problem that he must overcome if he wants to be believed this time,” Lacson added.
Robredo also dismissed Advincula’s narration and said she never met or talked with him.
She said she had met Trillanes several times to discuss the Magdalo party-list’s survey for the recently concluded midterm elections.
“We never mentioned about (any) destabilization nor of Bikoy,” the Vice President said. “I will never be a part of a stabilization plot.”
Losing senatorial candidate and outgoing party-list Rep. Gary Alejano also denied having met Advincula.
“I categorically deny the allegations of Bikoy. I do not know him and have never met him. Further, the Otso Diretso did not meet Bikoy ever. His claim that the Otso Diretso is planning to bring down the administration to have VP Leni sit as president is a lie,” Alejano said.
The Palace, meanwhile, said Advincula would have to substantiate his new allegations.
“We would rather wait for the investigation that will be conducted by the PNP relative to his revelations. As a lawyer, I just don’t believe in what a person says,” he added.
Also on Thursday, the Justice Department urged Advincula to subject himself to a probe by the National Bureau of Investigation.
Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra earlier called on Advincula to participate in the investigation of the NBI on the so-called Bikoy videos. With Maricel V. Cruz, Nat Mariano and Rey E. RequejoEAD: ‘Bikoy’ loses credibility as accuser—DOJ

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